
Mark Carney was asked by a reporter if he shared his late father’s views about residential schools. Robert Carney, who never minimized any of the harms caused by residential schools, insisted that the positive aspects of residential schools should be recognized as well as the negative.
So, Mark Carney had a clear opportunity to stand by his distinguished late father’s eminently reasonable opinion — an opinion that most Canadians would share. Here was an opportunity to make a stand for common sense.
It was not to be. In clipped tones, Mark Carney gave a terse “I don’t share those views,” and then went on to explain that the demands of “truth and reconciliation” require everyone to publicly profess that the very complicated history of residential schools was entirely negative.
He has not yet been asked if “reconciliation” also demanded that all Canadian politicians must also declare a belief that the history of residential schools constituted genocide, but other senior leaders have recently made exactly that demand. So presumably when the demand is made that Mark Carney also publicly genuflect on the altar of 'reconciliation' he will comply with that demand as well, and throw not only his father but all Canadians under the bus as being complicit, in a genocide.
Meanwhile in British Columbia, Pierre Poilievre is under pressure to dump Conservative candidate Aaron Gunn, for comments Gunn made about residential schools and genocide.
The regional chief for British Columbia says Gunn must be jettisoned for videos Gunn posted on social media saying that Canada’s program of residential schools did not constitute an act of genocide, and that the schools are “much-maligned.”
“There was no genocide. Stop lying to people and read a book,” Gunn wrote in 2020.
In another post, Gunn suggests that the burning of a church after news broke that 215 anomalies were found on the grounds of a former B.C. residential school occurred because of “weak, spineless politicians who cede all the narrative ground to the media and radical left.” (Hundreds of churches were subsequently burned.)
So, Aaron Gunn is….under the gun for his opinion that residential schools were not genocide. One doesn’t have to be a legal scholar to know that he is right. In fact, no one in this country has ever been convicted of committing genocide in Canada. The only mass killing in Canadian history that probably fits the legal description of “genocide” is the extermination of the Huron and lesser tribes by the Iroquois in the 17th century and possibly the slaughter of the Beothuks in Newfoundland by Micmac, British and European fishermen in the 18th.
But Aaron Gunn wasn’t talking about ancient Canadian history. He was referring to a relatively recent campaign by indigenous activists to brand Canada’s history of residential schools as a genocide.
But whether or not “genocide” occurred is not a popularity vote, nor is it up to any particular group of aggrieved people to adjudicate. Instead, it is a legal matter that must be determined by an internationally recognized court of competent jurisdiction. Aaron Gunn knows that. But the chiefs don’t. And they want Gunn gone.
So far, Pierre Poilievre has resisted calls to get rid of Gunn. But will he now cave in and throw Gunn under the bus, like John Rustad did to Dallas Brodie, and Mark Carney did to his own father? Or will he stand his ground?
Meanwhile, calls are coming from other senior indigenous leaders to force anyone seeking political office to denounce residential schools as genocide, or be disqualified from running for political office.
Stephanie Scott, executive director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, said: "All people, especially those seeking or holding positions of authority, must acknowledge the genocide and commit to factual research, rather than spreading harmful misinformation and perpetuating lies."
Other senior indigenous leaders have made similar demands.
Aaron Gunn is factually correct that genocide has not been proven. So what are these indigenous leaders referring to when they make their bizarre demand that any Canadian who seeks elected office must publicly acknowledge Canada’s residential schools history as being “genocide”? Surely it can’t be the late night airplane ramblings of an ailing pope?
One must assume that they refer to the Parliamentary motion equating residential schools to genocide that was brought by NDP MP Leah Gazan. In perhaps the most shameful day in Canadian Parliamentary history our elected leaders took exactly 47 seconds — and no investigation — to declare their own country guilty of genocide. While it was a motion with no legal consequences, similar motions soon followed across Canada in indigenous organizations, including The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.
A similar motion had been brought by Gazan almost immediately after the May 27, 2021 Kamloops announcement, falsely claiming that the remains of 215 indigenous children, students of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS,) had been found in the apple orchard area of the schools grounds. (Only soil anomalies were found. Not 'remains.')
That motion was premised on the belief that the Kamloops claim was true. The motion failed, for a number of reasons, but the debates and newspaper articles at the time make it clear that Gazan and her supporters were absolutely convinced that 215 bodies had been found, and that the claims made by Chief Roseanne Casimir were true.
The failure of the motion did not stop the campaign to label Canada’s residential schools as genocide. For the next year a concerted campaign was undertaken to ensure that a similar motion would pass the next year.
All of the indigenous heavyweights were enlisted to make the case for the passage of the motion. Chief among them was former TRC Commissioner, Murray Sinclair. He appeared in television interviews and was featured in dozens of articles claiming that there were "15-25000, maybe more" dead children, just like those secretly buried at Kamloops.
The Yellowhead Institute, recognized as Canada’s foremost indigenous think tank wrote this: "Yet, almost seven years and thousands of uncovered graves on residential school grounds later, this question should be re-visited. What do we make of Canadian genocide now?"
And dozens of other indigenous senior leaders and activists campaigned to make sure that the genocide motion would pass. Clearly, these people believed the claims that 215 secretly buried indigenous children at Kamloops, and “15-25,000, or more” like them across Canada, had met their fate under sinister conditions at Canada’s residential schools. Or said they believed that, anyway.
And presumably, the Parliamentarians who unanimously voted for the genocide motion in Oct, 2022, also believed some version of those claims.
And after 47 seconds of “careful thought,” our elected representatives passed the genocide motion. (Regardless of who becomes our new prime minister on April 28, one of the first things he must do is to work to rescind that disgraceful resolution.)
But as a result of that hastily passed resolution indigenous leaders are now insisting that anyone intending to run for political office in Canada must believe (or pretend to believe) that those claims of tens of thousands of dead and secretly buried children are true. The chiefs are claiming a veto over free discussion and debate in Canada!
The problem with all of this is that there is not one scintilla of evidence that even one child — much less “15-25,000, or more” children — met their fate in the fashion claimed. As Professor Jacques Rouillard has written, not one body has been found.
And if there indeed are 25,000 missing children, where are the 25,000 grieving mothers, and 25,000 distraught fathers looking for their “disappeared” children?
Where are the 25,000 missing children’s reports? Where is even one such missing child report?
Why don’t any of Canada’s history books have even one word about children being secretly buried late at night by evil Kamloops priests? Or anyone?
Why didn’t any of the tens of thousands of people who worked at Canada’s residential schools ever say anything about the horrific evils that were supposedly taking place at their places of work?
Why didn’t any of the principals, bureaucrats, prime ministers or anyone else who would have to know about the evils supposedly taking place under their watch ever say anything about it?
Why was Robert Carney proud of his work with the schools, and wanting the good they did recognized? Are we asked to believe that people like Carney participated in horrors, and kept it all quiet.
The answer to these questions is clear: The claims of thousands of 'disappeared' children are completely false.
Residential schools, flawed though they were, were there to educate indigenous children. The thousands of people who worked in that system — like Robert Carney — were not monsters, but ordinary, decent Canadians. Those trying to stifle political debate in Canada to further their own agendas cannot be allowed to do so.
Aaron Gunn is a brave and worthy candidate. Pierre Poilievre should continue to stand by him.
Here is a resident of the Kamloops indigenous community who attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School when these murders and secret burials are alleged to have taken place.
He describes his school in positive terms. But, more to the point, he says that there are no bodies buried at that apple orchard. Those are just stories. He says that the Kamloops people made a mistake when they claimed that 215 bodies were buried there.
He believes — as I believe — that they now realize that they made a serious mistake believing silly stories, and now don’t know how to admit that they were wrong.
But they are under pressure from senior indigenous leaders to keep quiet, in order to keep the gravy train running down the tracks. Listen to him being interviewed by star Rebel reporter, Drea Humphrey, and judge for yourselves.
But even if people want to persist in their belief that 25,000 children went missing from residential schools, as these activists claim — despite not even a scintilla of evidence to support their wild imaginings — why in heaven’s name would anyone in their right mind make it a requirement that anyone running for political office be required to publicly profess their belief in such a zany conspiracy theory?
And if Aaron Gunn — like this author — doesn’t believe that such things took place, why shouldn’t he be allowed to say so without being disqualified for running for political office? I repeat: Are indigenous leaders now claiming a right to veto free discussion and debate in this country?
Mark Carney has made it completely clear that if Aaron Gunn was a Liberal candidate he would be gone by now. A principled man would have simply told the reporter, “My father is not a part of this campaign.”
Instead, he chose to throw his own father under the bus. If he was prepared to discredit his own father’s life’s work to keep his political party in power he would certainly not think twice before sacrificing Gunn.
Meanwhile, some B.C. MLAs have come out in support of Aaron Gunn. Pierre Poilievre, so far, is doing the same. This is a chance for Pierre Poilievre to show Canadians that he — unlike Mark Carney — has the spine to be our prime minister.
If elected, Poilievre must follow through on his commitment to conduct a full investigation into the Kamloops secret graves claim. He made it clear that his government will stand for historical accuracy and truth.
A public inquiry, with a distinguished panel of historians and other experts — with no ties to the clearly conflicted chiefs’ organizations — should be convened to study all aspects of the false missing children/unmarked graves claim that has done so much damage to this country.
And when that investigation and inquiry have been completed, Parliament must revisit that shameful 47 seconds when it falsely convicted Canadians of genocide.
Aaron Gunn is right. There was no genocide. Gunn has the right to say that to all Canadians.